184 WILD SPORTS OF THE WEST. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 



I VERILY believe that no people upon earth are more 

 easily satisfied in roads than the natives in Ballyveeney. 

 A narrow strip of rough gravel along the sea-beach — a 

 mountain watercourse, tolerably disencumbered of its 

 rocks, or practicable passage across a bog, provided it 

 be but fetlock deep, are considered by the inhabitants 

 of this wild peninsula to be excellent horseways. 



That accidents do not more frequently occur is mar- 

 vellous. But the horse is born in the wilderness, and 

 if there be a practicable path, he appears to know it 

 by intuition. Hence, the rider traverses with impunity 

 a morass in which Colonel Thornton would have been 

 ingulfed, and skirts a dizzy precipice with no more 

 apprehension that a cockney wayfaring upon a turnpike 

 trust. " Use lessens marvel," quoth Sir Walter Scott, — 

 and I, who formerly witnessed the accoutrement of 

 these Calmuck-looking coursers, with a lively anticipa- 

 tion of broken bones, now stumble through a defile, or 

 cross a bog, with all the indifference of a native. 



Having despatched the dogs and keeper, we arranged 

 our beat, and started after breakfast. The road by 

 which we reached our shooting-ground is the sole means 

 by which this, our terra incognita^ is connected with the 

 rest of Christendom. It is rough and dangerous in the 

 extreme, and impracticable to every quadruped but 

 the ponies of the country. In place of mile-stones 

 which mark better frequented roads, heaps of irregularly- 

 sized pebbles meet the eye, and a stranger will be at a 

 loss to assign their uses. They are melancholy memorials 



